The Mike Robbins blog

Monday, 16 March 2015

It’s 1942, you’re in Nazi-occupied Europe, your marriage to a Reich citizen has
broken up and you’re a British woman, alone. What do you do? And how do you
explain it to your own security services when the war is over? Julian Gray’s Interrogating Ellie is a true story,
well told

I should start with a disclaimer: I know Julian Gray, and
when I was young, I knew Ellie. Julian
Gray is a pen-name; those who appear in the book are mostly now dead, but their
children are not. This extraordinary book – although written as a novel – is
substantially true.

Ellie, taken in Austria in 1940 (courtesy J. Gray)

Interrogating Ellie is
both well-researched and extremely readable. It is the story of Eloise, or
Ellie, Picot (not her real name). She was born in St Helier, in the Channel
Islands, in 1915. She and her brother were the illegitimate children of a
teenage mother, who had been banished to Birmingham by her family. Ellie was
brought up by foster-parents, and eventually found a job as a waitress at a
local hotel. In the early 1930s she met a fellow hotel-worker, and in 1938, having
just had their first child, they migrated to his home town in Austria and moved
in with his family. Ellie took Austrian (actually by now Reich) citizenship. Before
long, her marriage broke down, and her husband and his family kept her baby
daughters.

Eloise Picot was 27, alone, with no means of support, in a
country of which she was nominally a national but which was actually at war
with her own. But she had two things on her side – she was attractive, and she
was not a fool. After some ups and downs, she made for Vienna. For the next five
years, through the war and the post-war occupation, she would live on her wits.

Ellie did – after some difficulty – return to Britain
(although not to Jersey) in 1948, and in the 1950s she remarried, this time to an Englishman, and settled in
the south of England. She had several more children, of which Gray was one. She
died in 1973, aged just 58. She was a complex individual, and her life had not
been easy. My own memories of her, for what it’s worth, are good; she was
capable of great personal warmth, and was always good with me when I was a
child. But I was only 15 when she died, and I never got to know her as an

adult. Reading this book, I am very sorry that I did not. I knew virtually
nothing of her life in wartime Austria. Gray and his siblings, of course, did
know the bare bones of her life-story, and also that they had half-sisters in
Austria. But Ellie did not talk about the war, except to blurt out the odd
fact. It was a story that might have been forgotten had her eldest British daughter
not chanced to be on the website of Britain’s National Archive in 2013. She
casually entered Ellie’s name, using her earlier married surname, and found
that there was a file.

She was taken aback by its contents. It turned out that, in
1947, Ellie had applied to be renaturalised as British. In response
to her application, she had been interviewed by the British Field Security
Service (FSS) in Klagenfurt, the capital of the British zone of occupation of
Austria (she had gone there after the war; Vienna, now largely under Russian
occupation, had got too hot for her).

The FSS were an odd bunch, rolling into occupied countries
with the British Army and quietly taking care of business. Their story has
slipped away and is now little known. Their one member who is remembered is the
great travel writer and novelist Norman Lewis, who would go on to highlight the
oppression of indigenous people in the Amazon basin, and whose reports would lead to the founding of Survival International. Lewis served in the FSS in
Algeria, where he was alarmed by the behaviour of French settlers – an episode
he recounted in his autobiography, Jackdaw
Cake. Later he served in Italy, an experience which was the basis for his
most famous book, Naples ’44. One’s
impression from Lewis is that everything was a big mess, and that the FSS were bumbling
British amateurs who rather muddled through. It is true that they were not, or not
all, professionals, and many were (like Lewis) simply soldiers. However, in
recent years allegations have emerged that they tortured suspected Communists
in postwar Germany. In Klagenfurt, they must have been wary. At war’s end there
had been a determined attempt by Tito’s troops to wrest control of Carinthia,
which had a Slovenian minority, from Austria.
This had led to a tense standoff between British and Yugoslav troops in
Klagenfurt’s town square

.

Moreover postwar Europe was full of people who were anxious
to secure visas for somewhere more congenial, and therefore claimed to have
behaved honourably under the Nazis. Of course they sometimes lied, and the FSS
must have been suspicious. Their report established that Ellie had been conscripted
into the Luftwaffe early in the war, despite her protestations that she was
British. However, when a report was received from Austria confirming that she
was indeed British, she was kicked out and impressed as forced labour in a
factory in Graz, where she slept beside slave labourers on a concrete floor. She
seemed to have used her femininity to get her out of that, and then went to
ground in Vienna. Exactly what she did there was not clear.

In Klagenfurt in 1946 or 1947 (courtesy J. Gray)

The FSS transcripts, however, were damning. Their report
(which Ellie likely never saw) suggested that she had had liaisons with both
German and Russian soldiers and thus slept her way to survival. An internal Home
Office memo stated that: “The interrogation report from
Klagenfurt ...FSS is not very
satisfactory and presents the subject as an impulsive and irresponsible person.
...This woman is of bad character and requires her British nationality for
convenience sake. I submit that we refuse to grant a renaturalisation
certificate.”In
November 1947 Attlee’s Home secretary, Chuter Ede, recommended (apparently
personally) that she not be renaturalised. However, in a curious and very
English compromise, the Home Office stated that her bad character was not
sufficient to bar her from being granted a visa.

So what had Ellie been up to in wartime Vienna that so upset
the FSS? Using their reports on Ellie (parts of which are still redacted), Gray
has pieced together the story of a hand-to-mouth life. Best not to give too
much away; suffice to say that Ellie learned how to handle herself, and got
through the war, although not without trouble. And although she may have used (but not
abused) men, she also had a genuine gift for friendship, if Gray’s account is
to be believed. It is a gripping story,
and Gray has written it very well. I found myself on the edge of my seat as I
read it, and totally forgot that I was reading a real person’s story; it reads
more like a thriller. It helps that Gray’s style is simple and unsensational.
This is a tight, clean account.

How much is true? It mostly fits the facts Gray has – from
the FSS transcripts, and from his own enquiries in Austria in 2014. However, he
has invented or changed some things in order to construct a narrative. Thus he
has Ellie in a relationship with one Mayer, an Austrian Wehrmacht officer who is
part of the anti-Nazi underground. In fact, Mayer is based on a man called Carl
Szokoll, who was real enough, and was in Vienna at the time; but there is no
reason to believe they met. (There is also no proof they didn’t.) In real life,
Ellie and her Austrian husband had not two but three daughters before they
split. A friend who, in the book, is killed in an air raid, a Dutchwoman, was also
a real person and in this case Ellie did know her, but in real life she didn’t
die that way. Is all this all right?

I think it is. There is little here that could not have happened, and Gray is clear
about what he knows, and what he has had to invent (he explains all on the
website he has set up for the book). In any case, like all good books, Interrogating Ellie is about more than
the story it relates. Eloise Picot wasn’t the first person to move to a foreign
country, have children there and then find herself separated from her children
after a marriage breakdown. Neither was she the last. In this more global age, it’s
probably not uncommon. In her case, the separation was further complicated by
the fact that she was, in effect, in an enemy country.

There is a further dimension to this book that makes it
oddly contemporary. As Gray has said (on the website, not in the book): “When I first read the file that delivered
the British government’s verdict on my mother’s moral character, it upset me
...But as I say in the book, I realised I had to just try to understand what
led up to those judgements. ..I do still wonder, though, about the people who
wrote those judgements in the file ...What were their lives like, I wonder?”

It is a fair question. Ellie was one step away from forced
labour or a concentration camp. She may have slept with those who could protect
her, but there is no evidence that she hurt them, or anyone else. Today, more
than ever, one could wonder about the lives of those who grant or withhold the
right to remain; and how they would fare were they to seek it.

Julian Gray’s website
for Interrogating Ellie ishere. The book can be purchased as an ebook or
paperback on the site or through the usual online and retail channels.

Mike
Robbins’s latest book, Three Seasons: Three Stories of England in the
Eighties,is available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Scribd and other online retailers, and
can also be ordered from your local bookshop.

Requests for review copies should
be sent to thirdrailbooks (at) gmail.com, via NetGalley, or to the author.

Saturday, 7 March 2015

More from the reviewer’s vault. Four highly individual,
oddly compulsive thrillers – all by women writers

For some reason one does not really think of women writing
violent thrillers. Yet it is hard to see why they wouldn’t.They have been writing the best detective
stories for a very long time (Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh all
spring to mind). These call both for good plotsmithing – a prerequisite of the
thriller writer, too – and for the ability to get inside the mind of the
violent and evil (a skill displayed especially well in Elizabeth Krall’s In Your Sights, reviewed below). Like so
much gender stereotyping, this is about preconceptions. But it may also be that
women have been less likely to read thrillers, or violent books, for the lack
of strong female characters.

The four books I've reviewed below are highly individual in their approach.Krall’s is a psychological thriller with a
smart Sydney backdrop. Gloria Piper’s Long
Pig is something very different, set in a cult with an appalling secret.
But they are equally dark. Chance Maree’s Dark
Matter Tiding is a highly unusual and original book with a big dash of
science fiction. Finally, T. B. Markinson’s Claudia
Must Die is a brisk bit of noir with a cinematic air; I could see it going
on the big screen, no problem. Enjoy.

(Disclaimer: The authors
kindly supplied ebooks for review.

The reviews are non-reciprocal.)

In Your Sights

Elizabeth Krall

Elizabeth Krall’s thriller In
Your Sights begins conventionally enough. Caroline is an attractive
recent widow living alone in a seaside suburb of Sydney. After 18 months of
widowhood she’s embarking on an affair with a married colleague, but isn’t sure
if she should. One night, confused and worried, she goes out to take pictures
in the moonlight, and finds and helps the victim of a particularly sadistic
rape. Then she finds that she herself is being stalked by a mysterious
photographer who posts his pictures online. Is he the rapist? Will he target
her?

This sounds like the plot of a good solid conventional thriller, but there are
a couple of things that lift this book above the average. One is that the
Sydney backdrop is done so well. The city feels very vivid; yet it’s done
subtly – there’s no sense of the Bridge or the Opera House being in your face.
Krall has also got the pacing right; I never felt that things were happening
too quickly or too slowly, and the book’s about as long as it needs to be.

However, what really makes this book work is the psychological portrait of a
violent sadist. We actually know who it is a bit more than halfway through (I’d
guessed a few pages earlier). From there on, it’s not the point; instead, we
are taken right inside the mind of a monster, who feels very real. Krall seems
to know (as far as anyone can) how a narcissistic psychopath thinks, and how
they see the world. She also understands how plausible, and how intelligent,
they can be. She has clearly done her homework, but she also has the good
writer’s ability to get inside minds that do not work like her own (or one
hopes not, anyway!). Because the reader is made to see how very easily this
person can kill, the tension is maintained right to the end.

As in any book, there are one or two things that could work better. One of the
characters has had a career from which a childhood injury would probably have excluded
him. One or two minor characters don’t quite come alive. More seriously,
Caroline herself didn’t engage my sympathy enough. I didn’t want to condemn her
for having an affair with a married man – you’re shown how it happened, and
anyway, this was a woman who had been recently widowed without warning, at
quite a young age. Yet she seemed somehow insipid and lacking in character. She
did improve as the book went on, there were other good guys to root for and in
any case, not every reader needs to identify with the protagonist; it’s a
personal thing. It’s also worth saying that some scenes are quite hard to deal
with, as the villain is a very serious sadist. Anyone who is easily disturbed
should maybe find a lighter read.

The fact remains that Krall has, with great skill, looked through the eyes of
one of the worst people on the planet, and the result is gripping. Apparently
this is the first of three such books set in Sydney (Krall calls it a Sydney
triptych). Given her ability to write a psychological thriller, and the
enjoyable Sydney background, her readers may be in for a treat.

Long Pig

Gloria Piper

Gloria Piper’s Long Pig starts
with a young girl being brought to what appears to be a monastic institution,
high in the mountains. A devotee is assigned to care for her. Bit by bit their
relationship develops. But there is something wrong here: this isn’t a
conventional monastery or a nunnery – it’s a cult. And the girl is not there
willingly. Moreover there is something about the place that makes the reader
very uneasy. As it turns out, that’s not wrong. This is a cult with a vile,
filthy secret. The way it is unveiled will send shivers down your spine.

Piper describes Long Pig as a fantasy novella, but
it could also be called a short thriller. It is indeed short – most people will
read it in one long sitting – but the length works. Piper allows the horror of
the cult to become apparent at just the right pace, with a light touch, so that
it never strikes a false or absurd note. If the book were longer, that might
not be the case. The number of characters is right for the book, and they are
well developed; the plot development is even and sustained; and we’re told what
we need to know but nothing more. Moreover the description of the cult, which
is a farm, and its surroundings is rich and evocative; there’s no excessive
detail, but I felt I was really there. This book feels, for the most part, just
right.

Long Pig is great entertainment,
but it also raises questions about the nature of cults, how people end up in
them, and the abuses that can be hidden within them. Not least of these is the
doctrine of eternal life, which is an established part of more than one
compassionate religion, but can also be wilfully misused by those who seek the
power of life and death over others. Another is that people who look too hard
for something in which to believe, and do not analyse it when it is presented
to them, can be dreadfully open to abuse. The author provides a brief afterword
in which she says that she was a child of the 1960s, which didn’t end well for
everyone. “Social movements abounded… Some pushed causes… [others] jumped off
the bridge of responsibility into the ocean of drugs… Many poured themselves
out in metaphysical movements – New Age, Hari Krishna, Self-Realization,
Christian Charismatic Movement, Satan worship… Many crashed and drowned. Yet
many resurfaced, born again. I was no exception.”

None of this is raised explicitly in the book, which has a strong narrative
pace. It’s first and foremost a good story. If I did have a beef with this
book, it was the ending – right at the end, one or two things did strike a
slightly false note. To explain why would introduce a spoiler to this review,
and I don’t think reviewers should do that; in any case, not all readers will
feel the same way. Also, readers should be aware that, in a few places, Long Pig is pretty gruesome. It’s
not overdone, but like Krall’s book, reviewed above, it might not be suitable
for the easily disturbed.

The fact remains that Long Pig is a
little gem; a short, sharp tour de force
that uses the novella, or short novel, form really well. Don’t read this if
you’re too prone to nightmares. Do read it if you want a short but well-judged
thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat – and also, perhaps, raise
broader questions about how people exercise power over each other and what the
consequences can be.

Dark Matter TidingChance Maree

This is an unusual book. In some ways it’s flawed; it’s
basically not one book but three, and not all of these strands integrate fully
with each other or are tied up at the end of the book. Despite this, the book
is more than worth reading, because of its originality, the quality of the
writing and some very well-drawn, vivid characters.

Dark Matter Tiding opens in
Washington DC sometime in the near future. Camera Hence, a drone engineer, is
attending a presentation at which she will see some of her drones’ handiwork.
It turns out that they’ve been used to take out a group of innocent Afghans who
strayed too close to an oil pipeline. Sickened, she plans her own bloody
revenge on her employers for the way in which they’ve used her creations. How
she goes about this, and whether she succeeds, needn’t be stated here. (I hate
spoilers in reviews.) Suffice to say that she winds up in hospital and being
questioned by the FBI. At that point, she hears that her father has died, and that
she must go to his ranch in Texas, where she must try to save the ranch from
the misjudgments of her brother and the machinations of his awful girlfriend.
This is the main subject of the rest of the book.

The book thus switches out of one plot and into another just 10% or so through
the book, and Camera’s actions in Washington and their consequences are never
fully resolved. Instead the author starts telling a completely different story,
about a ranch in Texas. Meanwhile, in the background, there is the menace of
Dark Matter, which is slowly enveloping the Earth and turning some people crazy
and delusional. But the nature of the Dark Matter, and its ultimate meaning for
humans, is also never really explained. As we still don’t know why some matter
in the universe cannot be seen, the author could have had fun with this. The
fact that she doesn’t is also unsatisfying. But mainly, it is never quite clear
what the book is mainly about – Dark Matter, Camera’s revenge on her employers,
or the saving of the ranch.

But these flaws don’t spoil the book, because Chance Maree writes really well.
When Camera arrives in Texas, the ranch, its surroundings and its history are
very nicely described. Better still, some of Maree’s characters really leap off
the page. Camera’s feckless brother, Nathan, and her equally useless mother are
vivid and believable creations. Nathan’s appalling girlfriend, Kikko, is all
too real – she could have descended into caricature, but Maree is too good a
writer for that and makes her a genuine monster. There is also a great
supporting cast of Texas lawyers, farmhands, petty crooks, film crews, FBI
agents and cops, and even a bunch of young people deluded by Dark Matter into
thinking they’re vampires.

Moreover, there is a fascinating thread that runs through the book, albeit too
subtly sometimes: When something like Dark Matter is making everyone weird, how
do you know you can trust your own judgment?
It’s a question Camera has to confront at the end of the book, when she must
make a grave moral decision – and must first decide whether she is still
qualified to take it.

Had the book had a more unified theme, and had it not switched location and
plotline so suddenly near the beginning, it would have worked better for me.
Maree could have done more with the Dark Matter, too. But it’s still a striking
book by an author with real flair and originality. Despite some reservations, I
do recommend it, and I plan to read more of her work.

Claudia Must Die

T.B. Markinson

Claudia Must Die
is a thriller, but quite an unusual one – part psychological thriller, part
road movie, with a touch of bizarre comedy thrown in as well. And it does all
sort of work.

The Claudia of the title marries what she thinks is a prosperous local
businessman, and finds that he’s a thoroughly nasty crime boss. Worse, he
treats her as a virtual prisoner and is violent. So she takes off to far-away
Boston, taking a lot of his money with her. But he’s hunting her down. Then she
sees Parker, a woman identical to herself, in a coffee shop, and sees a way of
getting him off the track: get his goons to kill her instead, then steal her
identity. It nearly works. Trouble is, the goons miss Parker, and kill a third
woman, who happens to be Parker’s lover. Worse still, the lover’s cousin is a
master criminal himself. Now Claudia not only has her husband’s heavies after
her, she has to flee him as well. Plus Parker. Who is, understandably, pissed.

There’s an obvious flaw here: Claudia tried to kill one innocent person, and did
kill another – so do we care whether she herself gets killed or not? This could spoil
the book. But it doesn’t, because the complex interactions between the
characters create shades of grey. You grow increasingly attached to them – even
to Claudia. Eventually they all set off on a surreal road trip across the US –
and by then, I was hooked.

Claudia Must Die pushes the
reader’s limits a bit; there’s a lot going on and you need to pay attention to
who’s trying to kill whom, and why. The characterization is also quite complex,
and is important to the plot. It’s a technical challenge for the author, and
now and then she does nearly lose it. In the last parts of the book, in
particular, one or two things don’t work quite as well as they should. In the
end, though, Markinson does hold everything together and brings the book to a
satisfying conclusion. It helps that the book’s the length it needs to be, no
more, no less – and each episode has the length and pace it needs, too. Claudia Must Die isn’t perfect. But
it’s great fun, and if you like thrillers, it’ll keep you involved.

It’s also quite cinematic. If I were a screenwriter, I’d be looking back
through this book scene by scene, and sucking my teeth thoughtfully. Anyone
like to shoot some noir?

Mike
Robbins’s latest book, Three Seasons: Three Stories of England in the
Eighties,is available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Scribd and other online retailers, and
can also be ordered from your local bookshop. Requests for review copies should
be sent to thirdrailbooks (at) gmail.com, or to the author.

Sunday, 22 February 2015

There have always been good children's books, but there wasn't always much for older teens and younger adults. That's changed for the better. Three good new Young Adult books that this rather old adult liked, too

I left school in 1974, at 17. Teachers and I parted company
with mutual incomprehension and dislike. There were then still craft
apprenticeships for working-class boys, and university or polytechnic for
middle-class kids who could pass exams, but the British class system was at a
loss as to how to deal with those who were neither. My parents hinted that I
could be articled to a solicitor. I hinted that I would rather be disembowelled.
Eventually, someone saw a small ad for a stockroom assistant at the Oxford
University Press showroom in Oxford’s High Street. I got the job. For the next
year I carried dusty piles of books,
stood attentively while ladies chose white wedding Bibles for their
daughters, typed invoices with carbon paper that turned my fingers black, and sold
etymological dictionaries of Icelandic (yes, really; I sold two).

Now and then I ventured upstairs, to a quiet carpeted
showroom where there were books for schools. Sometimes I’d glance at a row of
what I suppose we would now call Young Adult, or YA, books. I suppose they were
meant for people of my age, or a little younger, but they weren’t inspiring. If
a Young Adult really wanted something that spoke to them then, there were a few
“young person’s” classics they were expected to like; otherwise, it was it was Tolkien
or nothing.

Times have changed. Not least because of the digital revolution,
which means you can now publish economically for a niche market. In so doing,
authors have found that this isn’t a niche market at all; it’s huge. Moreover
the definition of YA is elastic. The relevant Wikipedia page assures me that,
while the American Library Association defines young adults as between 12 and
18, others say 16 to 25, while “teen fiction” is 10 to 15.

I’ve been asked to review three
recently, and I very much liked them. None of the three are written “down” to a younger audience; they’re
every bit as literate or sophisticated as anything an older reader would buy –
it’s just that they address younger people’s imagination, and their fears,
hopes and dreams. Neither do they
necessarily avoid “adult” themes such as sex. The first of these books, Through the Fire, definitely does not,
and is probably aimed at readers of at least 17, going into the twenties and
above. Girl of the Book is likely for the other end of the spectrum, while Over
Cast might appeal most strongly to high-school students between the
two.But in a way it doesn’t matter; I’m
old, and I enjoyed them all.

Disclaimer: The authors kindly supplied ebooks for review
purposes (but these reviews were not reciprocal).

Through the Fire

Michelle Irwin

Evie is a teenager with a problem. She fancies Clay, a boy
at school, and he wants her. But when she kisses him, he recoils in horror.

“How can you walk around and just pretend
you’re normal? You sicken me! You and all of your kind.”“My kind?” I asked. “What does that even mean?”“Non-human filth,” he growled.

Wow. That was definitely a bad date. And when she gets home, Evie extracts a
confession from her father; she looks, acts and feels like she’s human, but
he’s always known she isn’t. She is, in fact, an ancient, mythical creature. So
was her mother, and because of that she was murdered by a sinister secret group
called the Rain, equally ancient warriors whose task it is to hunt down the
non-human and uncanny and destroy them. Worse, it turns out that Clay is a
hereditary member of the Rain. Evie and her father flee. But he finds them.

As for what creature Evie actually is, and whether Clay and his kind get her in
the end, best not to say; that would spoil the story. Which would be a pity,
because Michelle Irwin’s Through the Fire
is well worth reading. It’s mainly for older YAs, with the emphasis on the
adult bit; there’s a bit of sex in here, and some quite frightening scenes.
Anyway, older readers will enjoy this too (I did and I’m quite an old adult). I
guess the book also fits into the fantasy genre. There’s a lot published in
both genres now, and not all of it is good, but this is a cut above the
average. Making Evie a mythical creature instead of an alien is a good idea;
Evie is oddly believable from the start. Through the Fire
is also a genuine thriller, well-paced and sometimes very tense.

The story does slip a bit halfway through, when Evie, on the run, meets other
“others”, or non-humans. Up to that point, Irwin does a very good job of making
Evie and her story feel real, despite the fantasy element. The new “others” are
just a bit too fantastical, making it harder to suspend disbelief. This part of
the plot passes and Evie is out on her own again, and the book does recover,
but that was a chunk of the story that could have been removed without losing
anything. Also, earlier in the book, the reason for the Rain’s existence isn’t
established quite well enough. The love scenes went on a little long for me,
slowing down the plot. There are one or two other things that could have been
done better.

Even so, this is a good fantasy thriller. The two main characters are real. Not
only does Evie herself work; Clay, in particular, is struggling with the
conflict between his love for Evie and his mission to destroy her. (Intriguingly,
Irwin is putting out a book written from Clay’s point of view, too.) And the
book does raise some deeper questions. Why would some creatures be “others”
when we regard most animals as harmless? Irwin seems to have tapped into the
“uncanny valley” theory – that something that looks like a human but somehow
isn’t will freak us out. Also, because the story is told from the point of view
of the “other”, and her emotions clearly are very human, the book also feels
like an argument for tolerance.

Last but not least, Through the Fire
is rather well-written, in direct, elegant English. It’s also nicely produced,
with good and appropriate cover art and a refreshing absence of typos and
misspellings. Perhaps this shouldn’t matter, but it does – this book feels like
a quality product from the first page, and it is. Worth your time.

Girl of the Book

Princila Murrell

Courtney Parker is a 12-year-old South African whose father
moves the family to Saudi Arabia for two years, so that he can work on a
construction contract. It’s a well-paid job and will help pay for Courtney’s
education, but she’s none too sure about all this, especially when she sees
women on the plane put on abayas as
they approach Jeddah.

When she goes to school things go from bad to worse;
instead of the friends she has left behind in Johannesburg, she’s surrounded by
Saudi and other Arab girls who find her pale blonde appearance weird, and
either want little to do with her or show outright hostility. Even Lana, the
one girl who is friendly, cannot really understand that Courtney is not a
Muslim. Worse, the one other friend she makes – Nizar, the son of a Saudi
neighbour – gets into trouble for speaking to her.

Courtney keeps her head held high. But it’s hard for her, and you feel for her
every step of the way. That you do, is because of the empathy that author
Princila Murrell seems to have with her characters. According to the book
blurb, she does live in Saudi Arabia, with her family – so she knows what she
is talking about. But she also seems sensitive to how kids feel at this age,
with their intense friendships and enmities and deep sense of hurt. Moreover,
she’s used a very effective way to tell the story. About half of it is told in
the first person by Courtney, but the remainder is split equally between Lana
and Nizar, who also tell their stories in the first person. The cultural
misunderstandings and upsets Courtney has with them are thus seen from their
side too, and all three accounts have the ring of truth. There’s no sense of a
poor girl being thrust amongst a bunch of weird cartoon foreigners; everyone’s
real – the book is about them too, and you identify with them as well as
Courtney.

If I have a criticism of this book, it’s that it sometimes lacks a sense of
place. I can remember arriving in Sudan for a two-year assignment many years
ago; we had flown in by night, and when I walked out of the hotel in daylight
for the first time, the sunlight hit me like an axe. I didn’t quite get the
feeling of Courtney and her family being plunged into that in quite the same
way. I also wondered if she would really be the only non-Arab child in a school
that was teaching an international curriculum – but perhaps she would.

Even so, I really liked this book. Kids of Courtney’s age who are going to have
to travel may find this book helps them understand what’s coming. But they may
enjoy it anyway, even if they are not going anywhere; I think I’d have liked
this when I was 12, and identified with the characters. It may also help
introduce them to the fact of cultural differences between people, and how they
can be overcome.

Last but not least, parents taking their children abroad, or thinking of it,
should read this too.

Over Cast

K.W. Benton

Over Cast is a
novel for young adults, the sort you might buy for your teenager in an attempt
to wean them away from the PlayStation. The trouble is, you’re going to end up
reading it yourself. I was hooked from the first page, on which the main
protagonist, a 15-year-old girl called G.J., has an interview with the school
principal:

“G.J., do you have any idea how Icy Hot ended
up in Miss Ackers’ underpants?”This I can answer with at least a half-truth.
“No, sir. No, sir, I do not.”

For UK readers, Icy Hot is the US equivalent of Deep Heat – you put it on your
aching muscles. But you do not put on too much. It’s the latest disaster for
G.J, who is from Louisiana but has arrived in Washington State in the Pacific
Northwest to live with her aunt, following the death of her mother in bizarre
circumstances. G.J. isn’t completely at home or welcome in her new environment.
As her discomfort grows, so do the strange incidents that surround her,
including telekinesis, the Icy Hot and a budding friendship with a wolf.

If this all sounds absurd, it is – but this story has great vitality, and is
told with real skill. We learn of these events through the first-person
narrative of G.J. herself, and it is absolutely deadpan, slightly bewildered
and sometimes very witty. The aforementioned Miss Ackers is spouting spiteful
mendacious nonsense about G.J.’s family: “...She was at me yet again,
making up nonsense about my family. And well... in trying to ignore her I did
recite, “liar, liar, pants on...” under my breath, and then... well they were.
Just with Icy Hot.” Later in the book, returning to school after a
bad injury: “A hurt leg is one thing; a bandaged head is
quite another. I feel like I’m a victim in a Civil War re-enactment. All I need
is a flute.”

A strength of the book is the way the supernatural aspect is introduced gently,
and is mingled with the usual teenage angst. G.J. may have paranormal powers
but that doesn’t stop her lusting after the male students in a high-school
wrestling match. There’s enough normality for the weirdness to seem perfectly
natural.

This isn’t a perfect book. The author does overheat the plot a bit near the end
of the book, making it a bit harder to suspend disbelief. She is more
comfortable with female characters than males. There are also a few editing
glitches (miss use for misuse, waive for wave) that suggest over-reliance on
the spell-checker; with words like that, it can let you down. That sort of
thing bothers some readers a lot more than it does me, but they’re best weeded
out.

Even so, I liked this. It’s a teenage fantasy, but it’s well-plotted, with
attractive characters, and written with genuine wit, warmth and charm. I’m sure
it’d be great for young adults, but this rather old adult liked it a lot, too.

Mike
Robbins’s latest book, Three Seasons: Three Stories of England in the
Eighties,is available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Scribd and other online retailers, and
can also be ordered from your local bookshop. Requests for review copies should
be sent to thirdrailbooks (at) gmail.com, or to the author.

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About Me

Mike Robbins is the author of five books: The Lost Baggage of Silvia Guzmán (2014), a novel; The Nine Horizons (2014), a collection of travel pieces; Three Seasons, a trio of novellas; Even the Dead are Coming (2009), a memoir of life as a volunteer in Eastern Sudan; and Crops and Carbon (2011), about agriculture and climate change. He was born in London but has lived in many countries, and is currently in New York.
(Pic: S. Ligabue)